🚀 go-pugleaf

Mitchell D Dysart (dysart@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu) writes:

>One last point -- most violent crimes these days are drug-related, either
>directly related to drug trafficking, or related to people stealing to
>support an expensive drug habit. What do people think about drug legalization,
>and letting market forces fix the problem?


I think legalizing drugs is an excellent idea, for several reasons.


1.  Violence in America would drop dramatically.  As I understand it, most
drug-related violence does *not* consist of somebody becoming violent after
shooting up.  Most drug-related violence consists of (in hypothetical order):

    a.  People who use violence while stealing to support their habit.  With a
free market in drugs, prices would drop dramatically, thus making it possible
for most addicts to support their habit via lawful work.

    b.  Drug deals gone bad.  When a deal goes bad in an open market, there are
peaceful means of recourse for the victim.  One could complain to the Better
Business Bureau or Consumer Reports; one could file a lawsuit; one could just
do business with somebody else.  These options aren't open to black market
dealers, so they are far more likely to resort to violence when a deal goes
bad.

    c.  Gangs and syndicates who battle over turf.  Open market competitors
also battle over turf, but their weapons are advertising, sales gimmicks,
and just plain providing a better product at a lower price.  At their most
violent, they might use lawsuits or government regulations to protect their
turf.  Any of these options is preferible to the weapons of choice that black
marketeers use when fighting over turf.  Legalizing drugs would put an end to
turf wars.  (Some claim that drugs dealers would continue to use violence even
if drugs were legal, but I doubt it.  After all, alcohol was once illegal; when
was the last time you heard of a turf war over alcohol?)

    d.  Criminals out on the street due to lack of prison space.  Prison space
is a finite resource.  When you put a drug user in a cell, you have one less
space for a murderer, or a rapist, or some other violent criminal.  By
legalizing drugs and granting amnesty to all prisoners whose only crime was
drug use (or possession or trafficking), we would have plenty of space to put
the violent criminals-- without raising taxes or building new jails.  More
violent criminals in jail means fewer on the streets, and fewer on the streets
means safer streets.
        How much prison space would be freed?  I recall a study done in Florida
which showed that of 45,000 prisoners in jail on drug-related charges, 40,000
of them were in solely for drug-related charges.  If that pattern holds for all
50 states, then legalizing drugs would free up hundreds of thousands of cells
which could then be used to house violent criminals.  (I'll try to track down
the source of that study, if anybody's interested.)

    e.  Dealers who use violence to avoid being caught.  Currently, dealers
have to use violence (or at least the threat of it) to prevent citizens and
police from interferring in their trade.  If drugs were legal, there would be
no need to do so.

2.  Legalizing drugs would help to make drug use safer.  The War on Drug Users
has two side effects that make drug use even more dangerous than it would
normally be.  They are:

    a.  The Drug War makes it difficult to obtain pure, high-quality samples
of the drugs in question.  For one thing, the clandestine nature of drug
manufacturing makes it impossible to build a high-quality facility for making
drugs.  Instead, drug makers must do their work hurriedly, leading to careless-
ness in the manufacturing process.  There is no time for quality control
procedures or product testing.  Another problem is that high profits that come
from the drug trade, coupled with the fact that most dealers have a near mono-
poly on their turf, encourages dealers to dilute their drugs with impurities
to increase the number of "servings" that can be made from the same amount of
raw drug.  These impurities are often responsible for drug-related deaths,
since a) The impurities may be themselves toxic, b) the impurities may react
with the drug to form toxic substances in the body, and c) it is impossible to
know how much drug (or even which drug, if the dealer uses other drugs for the
dilution) one is taking.

    b.  The Drug War has halted all progress towards the creation of safe
recreational drugs.  For one thing, the lack of competition in the underground
drug manufacturing industry leaves drug makers with little incentive to improve
their product.  For another, it is impossible to carry out scientific research
on recreational drugs:  No scientist would participate for fear of ruining his
or her career, and it would be impossible to use modern laboratory facilities
for doing the research.  In an open market, however, there would be fierce
competition among drug manufacturing companies for customers.  A company that
could manufacture safe (or at least safer) versions of recreational drugs would
make a fortune.  Thus, companies would be strongly motivated to make safer
drugs.  Further, since research could be done out in the open, it would be
possible to get good researchers and good facilities to do the job.  The end
result is that users would have safer drugs to use.
        ("Safer" could mean several things in this context.  It could mean
drugs that aren't as likely to kill or permanently debilitate you; it could
mean drugs that don't interfere with the user's reflexes, vision, or motor
coordination; it could mean drugs that don't cause paranoia, violent impulses,
or flashbacks; it might even mean drugs that have desirable side effects, like
improving mental clarity or the body's resistance to disease.  And who knows
what we might learn from the research?  We might even find a cure for cancer,
or AIDS, or Rush Limbaugh mania. ;-)

3.  The Drug War hinders the economy.  Hiring police officers, purchasing new
weapons, printing up propaganda-- These things cost money, and that money comes
from taxes.  Any money I spend on taxes is money I can't spend on food, or
clothes, or education, or CDs, or any of a thousand things I might purchase.
That lowers my standard of living, and it also lowers the standard of living of
the farmer, or the tailor, or the teacher, or the musician, or whoever makes
the products I would have bought.  Now multiply that by 240 million Americans
and you get *thousands*, perhaps hundreds of thousands of farmers, tailors,
teachers, musicians, and others who cannot enjoy the standard of living they
otherwise might have had.  Since *they* now have less money, *they* can't
afford to purchase as much, and so the people *they* buy from are now worse
off, and so on ad infinitum.  And of course, corporations and businesses are
also taxed, which leaves them with less money to create more jobs, or to do
research to improve their product, etc.  Not to mention that legalizing drugs
would also create thousands of new jobs, thus helping many of the currently
unemployed, and making it possible to cut taxes further as there would be fewer
people on welfare.

4.  The Drug War is endangering freedoms Americans once took for granted.  By
far the scariest is the current search and seizure policy, in which the govern-
ment can confiscate your property *without* first finding you guilty (or even
charging you) of a crime.  All they have to do is arrest you on a drug-related
charge, at which time they can confiscate your property.  If you are later
found innocent (or released without ever going to trial) you have to sue the
government to get your property back.  The burden of proof is now on you to
prove that your property was wrongly taken.  This hits the poor especially
hard, as they a) can't afford to lose what little property they have, and b)
can't afford to hire lawyers or take time off work to go to court.  Less scary,
but still disturbing, is the way the criteria for legal searches has been
broadened over the last few decades.  These changes were made primarily to
accomodate the people who complained that the police "had their hands tied
behind their backs" by laws that protected a person's right to be free from
unreasonable searches and seizures.

5.  The Drug War has turned drug users, most of whom are ordinary people "just
like us", into second-class citizens.  We have enough artificial distinctions--
race, gender, sexual preference, religious affiliation, etc.-- to divide
us against ourselves and keep us hating one another for years to come.  So why
bother adding yet another useless prejudice to the list?

6.  The Drug War is likely to keep expanding to cover drugs that are currently
legal.  You may find out you don't like the Drug War so much once they come for
*your* drug.


For the record, I don't use recreational drugs-- not even politically correct
drugs such as alcohol, tobacco or caffeine.  I like the feeling of knowing my
mind is functioning at peak capacity, without being disturbed by any alien
molecules in my bloodstream.  But I really don't feel like paying more taxes
for somebody else's holy war, and I *certainly* don't feel like losing my life,
or the life of a loved one, to the violence which that holy war causes.  If
you don't like drugs, don't use them.  If you don't like drug users, don't
associate with them.  But trying to control the bloodstreams of everybody in
America is worse than useless-- it engenders violence, causes death and injury,
drags down the economy, endangers freedom, and promotes hatred.  All without
even achieving its goal.

Rob Berry